


homecoming

by cuvier (orphan_account)



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M, Team 7 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/cuvier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>learning to forgive and forget is the best we can do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	homecoming

i. 

Hey, sister, you listening? If this is what you think you’re looking for, then you’re probably wrong. You know the times when you brush your hair a million times in the mirror and watch the strands fall out, soak yourself in soap for so long you’re shrivelling? Metaphorically slit your wrists to make way for his heart? You’re probably wrong.

You know the times when you hang out under the void decks? The places where the sunlight never reaches because he looks like he likes it that way? Good old times and good new times. Good old times and good new times because you think you might be the same except for that differentiating variable. He’s still shut up but it’s a different kind of shut up. You could sling your own arm around him and he wouldn’t move, so you do it and ask, “Hey, you listening – ” and his arm twitches a little and he says, “Yes, I am,” but that is all. He frowns and you smile and it’s like the world’s ending tomorrow, but that is all.

This is selling your soul; this is the five-step course to losing your mind. Nowadays you visit him on rainy days, standing at his front door with rain dripping over the edges of your umbrella and onto the tips of your toes. He sits in the corner chewing on his fingers and you sit with him with a towel by your neck, and he stares out of the window and says absent-mindedly, “He says I should go out more often. Naruto, I mean.” You smile and say, “I’m listening, I am.” This is eating away at your heart but you’ll keep quiet, you’ll listen.

Hey, sister, you listening? Girls like you shouldn’t be falling in love. You think you know this.

 

 

 

ii.

Once in a while you take walks. There’s hardly time for it nowadays but you still make time for it. In the past you climbed up telephone posts, messed up the wires, ran across fields stepping on flowers. Dried flowers, pressed flowers, flowers squashed under your feet with their petals torn into bits and pieces – you’d clean them off the soles of your shoes, wiping them on the neighbourhood walls.

He asks, petulantly defiant and stubborn, arms across his chest, proud like a son of war, “So am I getting anything out of this?” Heart in your mouth you tell him, throat dry, “It’s only a walk. You’d get sick shut up in your house all the time anyway.” With your backs to the ground you think you can feel your heartbeat pulsing through your arm to your fingertips, but you could grab his hand through the grass and he wouldn’t even notice. When you close your eyes you still see the clouds but you know all he sees is darkness.

“I remember,” you say afterwards, staring at the telephone posts with fondness, “in the academy I was always late for class because I’d hang around this place – ”

“And cut the wires and short-circuit the town. Tell me something I don’t know,” he interrupts, standing up. Up, up and away. You jump to your feet, stumble over the newborn primroses, rip the flowers apart and scratch his wrist trying to get a good hold. “What do you – ” he begins, tugging away from you like you’re some sort of infection, but you hold on, and with your other hand you snake one of the telephone wires between your fingers. Within seconds the buzz of chakra snaps it into two.

“I’d cut all the wires here if you asked me to,” you whisper, trying to stare him in the eye as his hand goes limp in yours. You hear him breathe in – he raises his other hand to your lips before you can say anything else, and whispers back, “Shut up,” his fingers wet with dew.

 

 

 

iii.

This is how the story went: “Move and I’ll throw you down.” With her hand on his neck and the other at his heart this could very well be the very last conversation she is having with him. At your dying moments you’ll remember the important things in your life – for some reason Sakura remembers learning that chakra could heal or kill but killing Sasuke is out of the question and she isn’t capable of healing him anymore.

“Like you’d dare,” Sasuke laughs, scraping at the rock beneath his bloody fingers so it chipped and corroded, crumbled right beneath their feet, and Sakura grips harder at his neck (leaving marks, leaving scars) and tells him, “Then I’ll die with you.” With sudden clarity she realises she means every single word in this sentence, and thinks, Is it really possible for me to – and then Sasuke pushes her to the ground. A shuriken whizzes past her ear and when she finally dares to look up she finds that it’d cut through the air where her head should have been.

“No, Sakura,” Naruto says, forehead bleeding from the cut Sasuke gave him just ten minutes ago, and falls so hard onto the ground Sakura can feel his kneecaps break. Right next to her Sasuke shudders and rests his hand gingerly on her own. She can feel him breathe – inhale, exhale, inhale – erratic, like a fish out of water. The point has been made. None of them would have wanted any of them to die.

Now, this is how the story goes –

 

 

 

iv.

Everyone was ready to forgive you. That was the thing that made you cringe, the thing that made you pretend to be asleep when they visited and terribly angry at them for being so obtuse about you and even more angry at yourself for being so selfish. You don’t deserve this sort of treatment; you deserve to be locked up and beaten up, interrogated under lampshine.

Three weeks later you get sent home empty-handed because you don’t have any more belongings. When you open the door you say to yourself, “I’m home,” and it resonates across the room – it makes you feel small, pebble-on-the-beach kind of small. Stupid thing to do, really, because no one’s home – 

“Oi, Sasuke-kun is back,” Sakura says, emerging from behind a tall stack of encyclopaedia, dusting her hands on the back of her skirt and Naruto follows, his white shirt stained grey-brown with dirt. You stiffen. Instinctively you ask, “What’re you doing here?” not because you’re curious but because this is the way you should be talking to them if you want them to leave. There is no reason why they shouldn’t hate you.

“Don’t be so hostile, idiot,” Naruto mutters, stepping over the paraphernalia strewn all over the floor, rag in hand, “We’re cleaning up your house for free,” and you reply, fixing your eyes on the wall, “But you aren’t my servants, or something. Not even my family.” In the resultant hush you can feel Sakura staring back and forth between the two of you, and then she says, “Who says we aren’t,” and kneels down to pick up the books. It is then that you notice the bandage around her knee and the gauze on Naruto’s arm. It is then that you realise they’re still carrying around the wounds that you gave them.

 

 

 

v.

Thanks. Why is his goddamn house so far away from the teahouse anyway? I mean, no wonder he doesn’t get to mix around. Okay, okay, you know I didn’t mean that – ow! Shit, Sakura-chan, it was almost going to heal.

But he’s still rude. I mean, I know I’m nice enough to stick around him, but if he weren’t beat up enough I’d still throttle him. What? No, I’m telling the truth! I’m serious. Just because I saved his goddamn hide doesn’t mean I don’t dislike him anymore. Rubbish, he still hates me too. I can tell. Well, I’m not believing that until he comes out and tells me that. Yesterday he just told me to shut up again. Hello, it’s been two weeks already, at least show us some appreciation – 

What? What about yesterday? Oh. Nothing, just those telephone posts near the outskirts. We just … lay about the fields and watched the clouds float by – yeah, I know, very Shikamaru thing to do. I’m not changing the topic! I just thought he’d want to get out a bit instead of getting stuck in this place all the time, you know what they say about people going crazy because they don’t get enough fresh air.

I’m not worried, who says I’m worried? I don’t know. It’s just – damn, Sakura-chan, you know I’m lousy at this sort of thing. I just don’t want him to end up unhappy again. I know everyone’s fine about him and all but at the end of the day it’s only just the two of us. And he’s already been through so much – huh, he talks a lot about me? I’ve never – shit, Sakura-chan, stop crying. Sakura-chan, listen, we’re all okay now.

 

 

 

(coda)

Sakura wakes with Naruto’s ten-year-old teddy bear nightcap in her hands, recalls falling asleep last night listening to his snores and staring at Sasuke’s back. One girl, two boys, three thirds of the bed spent on trying not to cross any unseen lines, but in the end there was no point because it was cold and they’d ended up like a mass of tangled string, arms and legs and waists bound by bits of blanket.

“Naruto,” she says, tweaking Naruto on the nose, “Sasuke-kun – he’s not here,” and waits for Naruto to wake up and respond in the stillness, waits for him to move and break the air around him like a hammer on glass. In the seconds that follow she panics mildly, considers punching Naruto’s face in, wonders if she should cry a bit, and then Naruto mumbles, rubbing his eyes, “Don’t worry, I'm sure he’s – ”

“I’m still here, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” Sasuke says, entering the room with his hands clasped over a clay cup, “I’ve nowhere else to go anyway,” but Sakura knows what he’s got is more than the sum of its parts. This time Naruto flips over, stuffs his face into his pillow and says, “See, told you there’s nothing to worry about,” but there’s a smile in his voice.


End file.
